Lately....

Although October flew by, it has been a fun month! I think just the break from the heat has brightened everyone's outlook. Wow, what a summer! Since the cool down, I've been making pumpkin bread and pumpkin muffins, we've enjoyed hot cider, we've played outside without needing/wanting to take a shower right away and we even had our heater come on one morning!

Mid-October, Sunshine and I were able travel with T on one of his work trips. We made the trip south to Corpus Christi, and had a great time! We got to spend an evening with Kim (a friend from graduate school) and her family. The following day we visited the King Ranch Saddle Shop in Kingsville and then Sunshine and I spent the day playing at the Texas State Aquarium. (which by the way is a GREAT aquarium if you are ever in the area!)

View from the aquarium. Beautiful day!

With it being a Tuesday, we were among a handful of people visiting. Sunshine loved the time to sit and watch the dolphins play. She had a front row view!

This was a bird from one of their shows.

Shortly after that trip, I flew to Kansas to celebrate my Dad's 60th birthday. It was great to be there, it's been since June since I had spent time with my family. We had a great weekend celebrating my Dad.

After blowing out his candles, he lit them again for the grand kids to blow out. Happy Birthday Dad!

We finished up the month with our church's Country Fair and our annual Grad Student/Student worker party. Tonight: trick or treating!

Pumpkin Party

We spent the morning at a playgroup with some friends from church. All the kids had fun decorating the pumpkin that they brought. The weather couldn't have been better! It was so nice to have a play date outside without being completely sweaty when we were done. They also got to make their own snack mix and play on the playground. Did I say the weather was great? We ended our time with our picnic lunch. Perfect morning!

Fun in the Sand!

Since it's been so dry this year, the creek has become a giant sandbox! Sunshine has enjoyed building roads, sliding down the creek bank, digging, and all those other fun things you can do in the sand. Thankfully it rained yesterday, so our sand activities may be on hold for a few days...but we'll take rain any day!

School Days

Pre-school is in full swing around our house. Sunshine is LOVING her Wednesday morning class at Classical Conversations. This month we "rowed" Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? She and her classmates had so much fun with all the book related activities and I really enjoyed planning and preparing for class.

First day of Classical Conversations

On Tuesday and Thursday mornings, we have preschool at home. Last week was Bb week. We wrapped up the week with a trip to one of our favorite local bakeries, Blue Baker, for breakfast. We had fun talking about what a baker does, what is served at a bakery, etc.

Enjoying a raspberry danish at Blue Baker.

Celery science for Cc week!

Ahhh....vacation!

We spent last week near Chama, New Mexico. We loved it. It was beautiful, relaxing, and the weather was cool. We are ready to go back! Five years ago when we lived in Manhattan, KS and visited Colorado, we drove through this part of New Mexico on our way home. We liked it so much, we decided we wanted to make a trip back- so this was the year. We stayed in a cabin outside of Chama. This was the view a few steps out the front door of our cabin at Corkins Lodge. We had fun exploring the area on the trails right around our accommodations. The weather was great...highs in the upper 70's lows in the 50's.
Sunshine LOVED that there was a playground at our cabin. She was very determined and after a few tries figured out how to climb this wall on her own.
We made a lot of good memories. We played games, sat on the porch, read, talked, and took naps!

We ate all but one meal at the cabin. T was so sweet and helpful and made it a vacation from cooking for me.
Every morning, and several other times during the day the deer would come near for a treat. Sunshine enjoyed feeding them tortillas. We also took a train ride one day...more on that later.

Tent Time!

We've been beating the heat this summer by playing outside in the early morning and later evenings. So, we've had lots of indoor playtime. Today we made a tent in the living room and Sunshine has really enjoyed it. She had lunch in the tent and played school with her stuffed animals.And yes my daughter is wearing a sweater in this picture. I think she is secretly hoping the sweater will bring us some cooler weather. I hope she is right!

Speaking of school, we are all excited for the semester to begin. T has some new graduate students this fall and will be teaching a number of classes. Sunshine and I will be having preschool here at home two days a week. She is looking forward to it and keeps telling me "I am old enough to learn how to read". I love her enthusiasm and hopefully I can foster it as we progress through the semester. On Wednesday's I will be teaching one of the preschool classes at Classical Conversations and Sunshine will be one of my students. I am really looking forward to it, as this is the program that she will officially start in August of 2012. It will be fun to get to know the other families and learn more about the classical model of education while we are there. Happy back to school everyone!

Gardening

In spite of the drought going on here in Texas, we still have some beautiful blooms in our yard. I love my purple morning glory. Morning after morning it's still going strong...thank you God for this beautiful flower that I get to enjoy every day! It's growing on a fence in our backyard mixed in with a bright pink coral vine. It's gorgeous.

Our garden has slowed down, and we are actually gearing up for our fall garden. We have a few faithful plants left though, like okra. It has such a pretty little bloom. .
I won't lie, I despise picking okra. The leaves are so irritating to my skin. I've tried wearing long sleeves, but I need to wear gloves as well. But who wants to wear gloves and long sleeves in this heat? So, as of last Saturday I hadn't picked for a few weeks. Needless to say there was a LOT of okra that needed to be picked and thrown away. I think T and Sunshine picked 10 pounds of it.
And last but not least, our watermelon. While we will not have the largest watermelons this year, I am just glad we'll have something to show for our efforts.